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Special Episode - An April Fools Story in the French and Indian War
205 Plays1 month ago
I know, I know, we're a couple weeks late on this one... but enjoy some levity with this whimsical French and Indian War story. Maybe you've heard of it, maybe you haven't - but the battle we're covering today is quite a unique one!
Intro and outro music - Drums and Guns by Village Volunteers Drum & Fife Corps
Sound effect used: Bullfrog Concerto.wav by soloan -- https://freesound.org/s/188723/ -- License: Attribution 4.0
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Transcript
Introduction & Episode Surprise
00:00:11
Speaker
Welcome back to Tales from the French and Indian War. i am your host, Jackson. I am your co-host, Matt. And Matt, what are we talking about today? I have no idea. Hopefully the French and Indian War, or i'm really I'm really in for it. I guess we'll see what you have in store.
00:00:30
Speaker
ah Yes. Once again, surprise for Matt. I think, yeah, just the last episode we did was also a surprise. So back-to-back surprises for Matt. um And then after that, don't
Teaser: Battle of Fort William Henry
00:00:41
Speaker
worry, listeners. I know we've kept you waiting. the battle The Battle of Fort William Henry will follow after this by the end of the month. So lots and lots to
Summer 1754: Jumonville Affair & Fort Necessity
00:00:50
Speaker
talk about here. This one is going to be a shorter one, but you probably haven't heard of it, and it'll be very interesting i guess to be as non-specific as possible so matt to begin what was going on in the summer of 1754 just what comes to your mind summer 1754 summer 1754 we're going back a few years aren't we
00:01:22
Speaker
Yes, going back a little bit on this one. Yes, for our listeners, this is not a chronological episode. This is a, I mean, we'll probably, we'll label this one as a special episode because it's a little out there.
00:01:35
Speaker
If I recall correctly, I believe the summer of 1754 was when Fort Necessity occurred. So kind the start of the big war. Yes, so...
00:01:46
Speaker
Washington is building that road with all the provincials and some of the regulars. They run into Jumonville and then cause the the whole war to start.
The Connecticut Battle Mystery
00:01:55
Speaker
Then they get beat at Fort Necessity. You know, basically that is the traditional start of the French and Indian War out in the Ohio country.
00:02:03
Speaker
However, Did you know that there was a massive battle resulting in the thousands, potentially most likely of deaths that happened elsewhere in the British colonies during the same time?
00:02:19
Speaker
Oh, I did not in the British colonies and, uh, in North America or in the heart, the heart of new England. Oh, really? I did not know this. Yeah, it is The scale of death was honestly staggering.
00:02:35
Speaker
So we're going to talk about that ah today. A little known encounter of the French and Indian War, yet very consequential for certain people or beings.
00:02:49
Speaker
So in June or July of 1754, we actually don't know the precise date of this because it was... I think it was reported or talked about a few years after, like written down for the first time in a very exaggerated form. And then other versions of this account got written down a little bit later in the, we can have a pretty good idea of what happened.
00:03:18
Speaker
But it was, we don't know the exact date. So sometime June or July of 1754, right when Washington is out there in the the wilderness of the Ohio country.
The Wyndham Frog Fight Scene Setting
00:03:29
Speaker
But we are going to look on the other side of the British colonies over in Connecticut. So when you think French and Indian War, you think Connecticut, you know, right? Definitely, Matt.
00:03:42
Speaker
Totally, for sure. Yeah, that's exactly what I'm thinking of. Also, I think I might know where this episode is going. But we'll see. We'll see. I think you might have tipped me off a bit when you said thousands of deaths that might have done it. But anyways, continue. Yes. Yeah, you would think if it was that consequential, we probably would have talked about it by now. So, yes. So in June or July, very hot summer over Connecticut.
Speculations on the Loud Noise: Judgment Day or Attack?
00:04:09
Speaker
You know, they were starting to hear about all these, the the townspeople in Connecticut, specifically in the town of Wyndham, Connecticut, which is in central, central eastern Connecticut. Yeah.
00:04:20
Speaker
They had begun to hear about all these increasing tensions with France. They had probably just maybe, maybe just heard about Jumonville affair potentially, because that had happened in late May.
00:04:31
Speaker
ah That news might have worked back. So they might be thinking, oh, there's fighting in the Ohio country. Acadia also for the last few years had been, you know, it had never fully been at peace. so and Connecticut is in New England, which is adjacent to Acadia.
00:04:47
Speaker
So they're familiar with warfare between the French and the Indians and the British living in New England. So they're hearing about the increase in tensions. War has just begun. And on this hot summer day, suddenly, in this small town, a great noise begins to be heard, a rumbling. The air begins to kind of shake with the noise, louder and louder and louder it gets.
00:05:12
Speaker
The townsfolk, they have no idea what's going on. It is the perhaps the loudest thing they've ever heard. they They all run out of their houses. They're asking each other, what's going on?
00:05:25
Speaker
Some of them think at first, is this judgment day? Is this the end of the world? has Has Christ returned? You know there's a lot of crazy stuff and in the book of Revelation. Maybe this is just part of it because...
00:05:39
Speaker
How else could you explain this terrible, awful noise? After the original hysteria kind of subsides a little bit, more practical suggestions are offered.
00:05:50
Speaker
They think, is that, are those Indians? Is there some kind of powwow or war chant going on with ah with a giant band of Indians that are about to attack us?
00:06:03
Speaker
You know, we've heard of... You might have heard of like the war whoop or the war song that some natives would do to kind of gear themselves up for battle and kind of inspire and motivate the the Indians in there in their group.
00:06:18
Speaker
So then the the villagers start thinking, oh, maybe there's 100, 200, maybe more Indians, some French too, perhaps with them. And they're kind of camped out just outside of our town and we're doomed.
00:06:31
Speaker
We'll be dead by morning for sure.
Discovery of the Frog Battle
00:06:34
Speaker
However, eventually it is decided, at least by some, some of the braver of the village that, well, whatever this horrendous unceasing noise is that's going on this whole time while people are trying to figure out what's going on, we at least have to go see what it is.
00:06:52
Speaker
And, you know, if it's, if it's enemy Indians that are coming to attack us, then at least we should, we should send some people out there with some muskets and, you know, See what kind of defense can be made, if any is possible against so many enemies.
00:07:08
Speaker
So two men. I'm sorry for laughing. This is a very serious topic. Let's that You're fine. I'm sure you know what this is going to lead to.
00:07:19
Speaker
ah So two men, one of them Colonel Elderkin and the other, I think according to the accounts could have either been someone named mr Gray or Colonel Dyer.
00:07:33
Speaker
think it might have been Colonel Dyer. know. There's a couple different accounts, but two men, two kind of leaders of the town, essentially. They head out, they grab their horses, they ride over the hill because the sound is coming from just beyond the hill. You know, it's out of sight. They can't see what's making this horrendous rumbling, rumbling noise.
00:07:54
Speaker
They ascend the hill. And they look out. And Matt, do you know do you know what is on the other side of the hill? I think you you know what the story is.
00:08:04
Speaker
i do know. i would i would guess hundreds to thousands of bullfrogs. That is correct. there There was a pond on the other side of the hill.
00:08:18
Speaker
And when they come across this, when they finally get the courage to go investigate, they come across there are thousands and thousands of frogs there.
00:08:30
Speaker
Now I believe by the time they got there, they were all essentially dead, or at least the vast majority. Or at least it's by the morning. yeah Either once they got there or by the morning when some of the sounds had subsided.
00:08:44
Speaker
When they investigated, there's just hundreds and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dead frogs in this pond.
Theories on Frog Deaths: Drought, Disease, or Mating?
00:08:51
Speaker
And that is what was making the hellish racket that convinced many that Judgment Day was here.
00:09:01
Speaker
Some, there's a couple explanations for this kind of behavior, like what, what killed the frogs, you know, what, what caused them to just kind of go crazy. And ah that you, when you heard this story, well, guess, first off, when, when did you hear about this? And what do you think, or what ideas do you have from what you've heard or read or just what you're thinking now of what killed them?
00:09:28
Speaker
Well, ah so I had heard about this when we were researching Fort Necessity back, but I didn't like look too much and into it. I just saw that there was like this other mentioned battle, but it wasn't actually a battle. it was just like a local legend that had occurred. Um,
00:09:45
Speaker
If I had to guess what caused frogs, town so like my parents house that I grew up at had a lake and they had bullfrogs there. We had one or two bullfrogs at a time and they were super loud. So I could only imagine what.
00:10:01
Speaker
a hundred thousand those things would sound like it would be horrible like horrendous by the noise so i yeah i also probably would have thought that the world was ending but um i would say maybe it was some sort of uh mating season or something like that and maybe it was like a you know a territorial battle but having i mean, if they're all male, having hundreds of thousands of them in one location seems so weird.
00:10:30
Speaker
But yeah, I don't know. Before I answer what I found online, I guess our when you say bullfrog, does that just inherently mean a male? Or is there like female bullfrogs? Or would is bull only like a male frog and then the females are called something else? I guess I have no idea.
00:10:48
Speaker
i i'm yeah no I'm completely talking out my butt right now, but I believe that there are female bullfrogs as well. I think bullfrogs are like the species.
00:10:59
Speaker
Okay. Yeah. i was going to say, because like when you think about cows, there's bulls and those are only males and then there's well cows and those are females, but I didn't know if the same rules applied to frogs. um Yeah. I know our listeners are probably like, oh yeah, they don't know anything about biology. That It's not their not there area of expertise. Not at all. You're a correct, listener.
00:11:21
Speaker
So from what I found online and you know most of the ah what I looked at was just Wikipedia because I wasn't going to do a serious, super deep dive into this this legend. And they had all the primary sources listed there that I could check out.
00:11:36
Speaker
and the The accounts, the original accounts are pretty pretty short in general. But two main explanations. One, that there was a drought that summer and the pond was drying up.
00:11:49
Speaker
These bullfrogs were getting into their each other's territories and they caused them to fight over the the limited area. Other explanations, an outbreak of disease, perhaps. There was one early account that mentioned like, oh, there was like a French and Indian encampment nearby and they were hunting frogs to eat.
00:12:12
Speaker
And then that like spooked all the frogs and sent them like rushing off in a kind of a, I don't know, some kind of stampede or of sorts or something.
00:12:22
Speaker
But yeah. There is one, the herpetologist, Susan Herrick. I'm assuming herpetologists must be like a frog scientist. I actually have no idea. herbologist would be, I'm assuming, a plant scientist. We have no idea what we're talking about. Herpetologist. Different than and than a herbologist. um Someone who is very specialized specifically with bullfrogs and the recordings of them.
00:12:49
Speaker
She speculated that all these bullfrogs, similar to what you were saying, were trying to find a mate. They were calling for our mates. And then as the shoreline was shrinking, probably because it was hot summer heat,
00:13:03
Speaker
They began what is called lecking, which I think is ah a case where when a bunch of males of a species get together to find mates and then they end up like going crazy and competing with each other and trying to kill each other because there's just so much competition.
00:13:19
Speaker
ah It's something to that effect. This scientist likens it as to like a mosh pit or like a crowd crush. So she had said that all the males gave up on having any territory at all and focused strictly on at least getting a female with no coordination of calls. It must have been a god awful noise. And I think this is what the villagers heard.
00:13:42
Speaker
So, yeah, I guess that is another aspect to it. Apparently, in normal bullfrog behavior, I guess there must be some kind of coordination or more rhythm to the calls. But I guess when they're all just screaming at the top of their lungs over top of what each other, that must have been horrifying.
00:14:00
Speaker
Jackson, have you ever heard a bullfrog croak? I think I have, but I'd have to like play another recording. You know, maybe when I'm editing this, I'll find a recording of a bullfrog and just plop it in here so everyone can hear.
00:14:28
Speaker
They're very, very loud and very, very like deep. Like it's a deep c croak. It's not like a high pitched c croak like a lot of like smaller frogs are. It's very loud. It's even so loud that my dad's family used to say like when one of them would like fart, they'd be like, oh, it's a bull frog. So that's a fun tidbit.
00:14:48
Speaker
Yeah, and I know there's some other animals. I i can't remember if it was like a lark or a loon. I get those confused. But I had listened to a like a call on some kind of like video from it, and it sounded like otherworldly. Like if you were in the forest in the French and Indian War, perhaps, you know the dense North American wilderness, middle of the night, and you heard some of these animals say,
00:15:13
Speaker
Like you would think it would be some kind of spirit or otherworldly figure or some kind of horrible, horrible like omen. Because some animals just have vary very, very crazy sounds that they can make.
00:15:29
Speaker
Yes, for sure. little love little yeah do it I was reading the Wikipedia page on this, and it also has two ah aka names, the Wyndham Frog Fight and the Wyndham Frog Fright.
00:15:45
Speaker
Both suitable. enjoyed both of those so jeff right jackson what do you think the long-term consequences of this battle how did this affect troop movements and doing no um so it's funny also later on in that wikipedia you'll see the town has kind of embraced this legend which is very fun i think they've got a bridge in the middle of their town that has like a statue of a frog on it um Apparently this was like a popular tale and like the 50 years after this. And there was a couple of ballads made about it.
Wyndham's Embrace of the Frog Legend
00:16:20
Speaker
um But yeah, long-term consequences, I guess would be some fun local history for the town. And you know, as we mentioned in the last, last few episodes, we love when some of these towns embrace their French and Indian war history and, and remember it in tangible ways. So that is the long-term effects.
00:16:40
Speaker
Yes, that's awesome. Yeah, I was thinking of doing this one for April Fool's since it's kind of in that theme. We're a little bit late on that, but ah we'll put this one up regardless as a good little French and Indian Wars, April Fool's kind of not a battle, but not a battle. Definitely and not a fight, but a fright as you had seen it named.
Anecdotes & French and Indian War Movie Plug
00:17:04
Speaker
Yes, that is that's all I've got here today. Very short one today. that's awesome i love you know seeing the fresh ending war and well i wouldn't say this is popular culture because it's seems like it's in like ballads and shows and stuff back then they're a little bit older but um one thing i did want to mention not related to this is that i think all of our listeners should plan to go the movies this summer when uh you know releases i was sitting in a movie theater recently to see uh project hill mary which again also fabulous movie if you haven't seen it um but in that like they're showing the previews for it i saw young washington and my father-in-law was with me i was like oh yeah so see that scene he was actually at the battle of fort necessity and i was going off on a tangent a nerd tangent so um yeah you should definitely all go see that movie because i don't know if there's been outside of like the last mohican i don't think there's been a
00:18:03
Speaker
big time french indian war movie made in quite a while i don't i don't think it's uh there's much out there in terms of media specifically set in that era so i'm super excited i got uh i already bought tickets for me and matt to go see it but um like there was like you could pre-order tickets or something but there was a giveaway where i have a chance to win like a 1700s musket because i bought tickets in advance so We're going to see if I can get that. ah wish Well, since there are tickets, I think that we should do a timeshare of that musket. So you can for a bit. I can have for a bit. it's so so
00:18:42
Speaker
It's all my wife tells me I can't have in my house anymore. Joint custody of the antique musket. Yeah. Well, get some well you're a lawyer. well You know some people who can help us settle it all out. Sure, sure. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:18:54
Speaker
Well, yeah,
Conclusion & Fort William Henry Episode Tease
00:18:56
Speaker
that's all I've got. Anything, don't know, I guess it's fun to explore. not just We love talking about the battles, the troop movements, the generals, but this some of the more wackier, more pop culture kind of stuff, a little less serious sometimes can be ah a nice break in between all of the vicious fighting in the wilderness.
00:19:15
Speaker
Yes, which we will definitely get to our next episode. Yes, lot of vicious stuff coming. Yay. Yeah. Fort William Henry, here we come. Yeah, so thanks for listening.
00:19:28
Speaker
I hope you guys have a great rest of your days or evenings, and you will hear from us hopefully before the end of the month, and we can keep our two-episode-a-month consistency going.
00:19:39
Speaker
there we go